Module 1

Embracing change

What you'll learn

You’ll start your Squared Online journey by exploring the concept of digital disruption and what it means for your role in marketing. As consumer behaviour and technology change rapidly, companies are pressured to transform marketing practices to stay relevant in business. You’ll identify characteristics that lead to successful adaptation and obstacles that sometimes cause organisations to struggle.

Digital marketing topics covered in Module 1:

Digital disruption and marketing transformation

Changes in consumer behaviour

Changes in the technology landscape

Adopting a digital-first approach in organisational characteristics and leadership behaviour

Leadership challenge - keeping up and leading the way with digital changes

As digital disruption puts pressure on companies to adapt, some respond well, and others struggle. Because of this, marketers need to take the lead on driving change. This module explores four key attributes for digital leaders, which you’ll continue to develop throughout your Squared journey.

Assessment: Group Project

Drawing on the digital marketing and digital-first behaviours, you’ll create a ‘case for change’ that outlines a high-level strategic plan for transforming marketing practices and processes of a company that’s at risk of becoming outdated or failing. You’ll identify the challenges and opportunities facing that company and propose new marketing strategies to address them.

Take a deeper dive into Module 1

The term digital disruption is used when new technologies impact how a business delivers services or products to their clients and customers. The word disruption might sound scary, but it’s not something you need to fear. If you’re willing to evaluate your current processes and technologies and are open to change, digital disruption will have a positive impact on your business.

With Squared Online, you’ll learn how to identify the challenges and opportunities facing your business, and embrace these lessons for high-level strategic planning. By studying digital disruption and marketing transformation, you’ll be able to adapt to new ways of working within your industry. This ensures that you stay ahead when new technologies come in, understanding exactly how they change consumer expectations and the way services are delivered.

Similar to digital disruption is disruptive innovation. Where digital disruption is about new technologies evolving current practice, disruptive innovation is about complete change in an industry. It refers to the new markets and value networks that begin when a company provides products or services in a different way to the industry-norm. Digital technology has a role to play in every industry, from e-commerce to marketing to HR. That makes disruptive innovation and digital disruption key to ensuring your business remains competitive in the face of new technology and ways of working.

The rise of Netflix and its impact on the entertainment industry is a great example of digital disruption. Offering users the ability to watch films and TV series on demand, as opposed to a schedule, Netflix drastically changed the way we consume entertainment. Noticing this transformation, competitors started to create their own streaming services. They identified the new digital disruption boom and adapted their processes to stay competitive.

Now, Uber’s a great example of disruptive innovation in the taxi industry. After witnessing the popularity of Uber, long established taxi companies moved away from telephone bookings to app-based systems.

A huge part of digital marketing involves staying on top of new trends and technologies. This could be anything from software to streamline data analysis or bringing in new technology to change the way you plan and manage workloads. With Squared Online, you’ll develop leadership and management skills to gain awareness of potential industry changes to your industry, as well as implementing the management of that change.

Before diving into the specifics of digital marketing like SEO, data analysis and content marketing, you’ll study the top-level impact of digital. Understanding exactly how it affects the workplace, especially in terms of marketing. You’ll learn how digital business disruption and disruptive innovation impact business, to analyse changes in the technology landscape and in consumer behaviour too. Finish the module knowing how to adopt a digital-first approach to organisation and leadership, enabling you to respond to changes and thrive in digital-age marketing.